


Wake the White Queen

by AriadneKurosaki



Category: Bleach
Genre: 685/686? I don't know them, Background Zangetsu/Sode no Shirayuki, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-TYBW, Tumblr Prompt, things get steamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:53:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29056998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriadneKurosaki/pseuds/AriadneKurosaki
Summary: Rukia's bankai is the most beautiful thing Ichigo has ever seen.It's also dangerous to him, and to her.
Relationships: Kuchiki Rukia/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 12
Kudos: 87





	Wake the White Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Ichigo has to help an injured Rukia out of her bankai state, and it gets steamy

Rukia and Byakuya have both told him about her bankai. Rukia, standing beside her brother, tells him with the characteristic modesty that speaks of years when she felt she could not open her mouth, when she was so self-effacing that she nearly disappeared altogether. Byakuya’s voice is different: it speaks of pride for his sister. Ichigo understands that tone, even if Byakuya still struggles with it. He understands, too, why Byakuya corners him later and tells him stoically, _her bankai is as dangerous to her as it is to others. Here is what you must know. Here is what your zanpakutō must know._

But until today, he has never seen it. Rukia is aware of the danger her bankai poses to her allies and does not use it lightly.

Facing off against three sternritter late one afternoon, however, they don’t have much choice. Even with Yhwach dead, the remaining sternritter are formidable in their power. And he and Rukia are facing three of them. When Ichigo, his own bankai still a work in progress after Yhwach’s repeated interference, goes flying, Rukia’s voice rings out.

“ _Bankai_. Hakka no togame,” she intones, and the world turns white.

Rukia’s bankai is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Gone is the shinigami’s black garb; in its place is a pure white kimono with swooping sleeves that sparkles as if dusted with ice and snow. Her hair has turned white, along with her eyebrows and even her eyelashes, and sparkling ice combs adorn her hair like a crown. Butterfly wings of white ribbon trail behind her, and Sode no Shirayuki’s blade of ice gleams.

Ichigo can hardly breathe in the frigid air that she – that _Sode no Shirayuki_ – has generated, and he lets loose his reiatsu to shelter him from the worst of it. Rukia’s eyes are blank, their amethyst shade lightened by her power, and Ichigo corrects himself: _she_ is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. The three sternritter, caught unprepared by her weapon, by the way the very air in their lungs freezes, shatter into a million shards of ice.

 ** _That’s some bankai_** , Zangetsu rumbles inside him.

Then her reiatsu shudders and Ichigo shakes off his awe, instead sprinting across the snowy wasteland she’s created and dodging the last of the falling ice. He lets his reiatsu surround her, warming the air around them both.

“Slowly,” Ichigo orders before she can say anything. “Byakuya said you need to come back slowly, remember?” He feels her reiatsu shift again, smoothing out and sliding against his. It’s intimate – more intimate than holding her, even, but he does that too, arms coming around her as Zangetsu rumbles contentedly.

Ice shatters as the jeweled combs fall from her hair as their reiatsu mingles and intertwines, but Rukia is still. He’s never seen her bankai before, but something pricks at him anyway. Something’s wrong; her skin is still so cold it _burns,_ and her blood is sluggish in her veins.

 ** _King,_** Zangetsu’s voice echoes in him, a growl that grows increasingly frantic. **_Snow lady says something’s wrong. You have to help the Queen!_**

Panic speeds his heart. Even with flash-step they’re far from help, out beyond even the very edges of the Rukongai. If he moves her, she might shatter. If he leaves her, she might die before he can get help.

 _Body heat_. She needs more of his reiatsu and his body heat, Ichigo decides. He drops Zangetsu and strips himself of his outer layer of clothing, leaving his shitagi to hang open. Her white kimono he pulls open, heedless of the way the fabric tears. Instead, he presses himself to her, bare chest to mostly-bare chest, and drapes his clothes over her, the layers huge on her petite frame and warm from his body. His hands chafe her slender arms under the fabric and Ichigo _blankets_ her in his power. “Come on Rukia,” he begs.

Silence reigns for an endless moment as they stand together. Then against his chest, he feels it: cold air puffing from her parted lips. Slowly, the white bleeds from her hair and the ice fades from her eyes. “Ichi…go?” Her voice is low and groggy, but then she seems to register that she’s half-naked in his arms. Dusky pink washes over Rukia’s cheeks and she looks away from him, though she doesn’t try to pull herself from his arms.

Ichigo slumps in relief and his arms tighten around her. “Thought I’d lost you for a second,” he mutters against her damp hair.

“So you took your clothes off and ripped open my kimono?” she asks, eyebrow arching up.

He doesn’t even flinch. “Body heat.” His voice is rough and low; now that she’s okay, Ichigo tries to ignore the feel of her soft, bare skin against his. “Zangetsu and Shirayuki freaked out, said something went wrong while you were coming out of your bankai, and we’re miles from anyone else.”

“Thanks,” Rukia huffs out, cheeks still pink.

“Your bankai is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Ichigo admits softly. “ _You’re_ the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Idiot,” she scoffs, but there’s no heat behind it and her cheeks are pink again.

She shivers in his arms and he tucks her closer. “Still cold?” he asks.

“I wield an _ice_ zanpakutō,” Rukia snaps, but she’s still shivering, and Ichigo’s arms tighten again. “…Yes, I’m still cold.”

Their camp, such as it is, isn’t far. As soon as she sheathes Shirayuki, Ichigo sweeps her into his arms, wrapping her kimono and his kosode, and then his shitagi too when she keeps shivering, tight around her body. His flash-step takes them to the cave they’ve been holed up in when not hunting down the sternritters. He’s glad they’re dead; cuts littered across both their bodies tell the story of their battle and how Rukia came to use her bankai, and the thought of their enemies living after laying a hand on her is. Well. It’s a good thing he and Zangetsu have come to an agreement.

He lands just outside the mouth of the cave, high in a rocky area out beyond the northern quadrant of the Rukongai, and sets Rukia down carefully. Ichigo takes her zanpakutō and lays it alongside his, hilts touching. It’s at Zangetsu and Sode no Shirayuki’s request; their blades share the same stand, too, in their home.

Rukia is still shivering and they’re _both_ bleeding; his hakama feel sticky with it. After six months living in Soul Society full time, Ichigo’s kido is still shit, but he can manage to ignite wood without blowing anything up now. In a few minutes, their fire pit is burning merrily and Rukia shuffles over to it, sitting as close as she dares.

“I should look at your wounds,” she says as she holds her hands out towards the fire. Her eyes meet his and then she looks over his bare chest, blood-spattered and with a gash below his ribs that’s still bleeding sluggishly.

“We both need to get patched up,” Ichigo agrees. There’s a kit with their supplies, something cooked up by the Fourth for trips like this, and he drags it closer to the fire. There are bandages and antiseptics, that miracle serum that every member of the Fourth carries around, and lots of gauze. “Think you can manage unwrapping yourself?” he asks.

Rukia huffs under her breath and peels off the fabric he’s swathed her in. Below the other layers her shihakusho is back to normal but ripped – Ichigo’s not surprised, since he’s the one who tore it. Her breasts are covered in a slender binding, but her stomach is bare and streaked with blood.

Her hands are bleeding too, the skin _cracked_ by her bankai, and Ichigo shuffles closer on his knees. “C’mere,” he mutters, and pushes the last of the torn and ruined fabric from her shoulders. Rukia doesn’t protest as he wipes blood from her skin and applies stinging antiseptic. His healing kido is actually halfway decent these days; it was Hanatarou who finally hit on the idea of training him to use healing rather than destructive kido. Beneath his glowing blue hands her wounds begin to close.

Soon she’s doing the same for him, hands hovering over the worst of his gashes.

At some point they strip their hakama off, both sets worse for wear, to tend to a slash on her thigh and another gash along his shin that’s not nearly as bad as it looks. His hands find hers when she’s done healing him, tending to the cuts in her skin. Even with the sword calluses her hands are soft as he cups them in his much larger ones.

But Rukia’s still _cold_ , still shivering despite the fire. “C’mere,” he says again, softer this time, and she goes willingly into his arms as he settles on their pallet. “You’re still like a block of ice.”

“Idiot,” she says affectionately. “You worry too much over me.”

Given that part of him still wants to howl over her being injured at all, and that the most protective part of him wants to yell at Shirayuki for sharing such a dangerous power with the petite shinigami, Ichigo can’t really disagree. (The rest of him knows that _she_ is both dangerous and beautiful and likes her that way. _Loves_ her that way.)

“Che.” He grabs for their blankets and drapes them over her. “Someone has to.”

Her skin is still cold on his, and Ichigo rubs one hand along her back as they sit together, close to the fire and pressed against one another. Rukia’s straddling him, wearing only the wrap around her breasts and her fundoshi. So it’s only natural that when his hand strays it’s to slide along the curve of her bare hip and then back up, along the line of her wrap. It’s only natural for his fingers to flick at the little fastener so that it comes loose and leaves her bare for him. “Ichigo,” she murmurs, but doesn’t protest.

“Yeah?” His hand strokes up again, tugging the fabric away and then stroking the soft skin of her back. There are scars under his fingertips; he feels the exit wound from where his sword pierced her years ago to save her, thin and slightly raised on her skin. When his hand comes around to her stomach, he can feel the scar that Aizen has left behind, and the scars that the Ninth Espada gave her, piercing her with a trident that nearly killed her.

The feel of her reiatsu ebbing down to nearly nothing is one of his worst memories.

“I’m still cold.” The words are soft, and Ichigo pulls himself away from the past. He can’t help the little smirk that curves over his lips. She is here with him now.

“I can fix that,” he murmurs back, and presses his lips to hers.

They’re slow, in the aftermath not just of a battle but of healing each other. Her fundoshi and his fall away quickly but Ichigo is careful as his lips trace over her breasts and his fingers stroke at petal-soft folds that are already damp for him. A gasp leaves his mouth when her hand wraps around him, strong and sure, but so slow that he groans his need against her shoulder. His lips linger on the skin over her heart.

They’ve shared power back and forth from the very center of their souls, and now when he’s so close to her Ichigo can feel the frost of her powers just as he knows she can feel the heat of his. He can sense, faintly, Zangetsu and Shirayuki finding one another in the bond between their bearers’ hearts.

“Ichigo,” Rukia says, more urgently, and he presses two fingers inside of her, using his thumb to stroke the bud of her clit so that she moans for him, sweet and low into his mouth. Her skin warms against his, finally, from the fire and from the heat between them. He keeps his other arm wrapped around her, hand clasped at her hip.

“Need me?” he asks, and grins against her mouth when she huffs. “Well?” His fingers press deeper, curving.

“Ah! You ask that like I might tell you I don’t.” Her lips part on a moan and then Rukia kisses him, mouth soft and lips red.

“No, I know you do,” Ichigo murmurs. “But I like when you say it.” Her hand on him makes his words break apart, and he breathes hitched gasps into her lips before he slants his mouth over hers, demanding more of her. She’s slick around his fingers, and he strokes into her again, thumb shifting to press just off to the side the way he knows she likes.

She comes just like that, in a rolling wave as she rocks against his hand and smothers her cries on his lips, and hasn’t even come down from it when Ichigo’s inside her, clutching at her as she rides out the last tremors atop him. The fire nearby warms the cave as they move together slowly, lips touching and parting. They don’t notice when the blankets fall away. All he can see are her eyes, pupils wide in the low light of the fire and pale skin flushed with pleasure.

“Faster,” Rukia murmurs eventually, telling him with only that one word that there is heat building within her once more. Ichigo’s hands fall to her hips to guide her, and the only sounds in the cave are their moans, sometimes loud, sometimes stifled in a shoulder or against each other’s mouths. Her fingers slip between them but his take their place.

“Let me,” Ichigo says, a begging note in his voice. Months after their first time together he knows now what she likes, and when Rukia rocks close to bury him deep, he presses just the way she’s shown him, circling his hips and slipping slick fingers over her clit again.

This time, he keeps his hips flush against hers and eyes open to watch the way she comes undone for him, the way her eyelids flutter and pink spills across her cheeks as his name falls from her lips. He follows just a few heartbeats later, moaning her name against the pale skin of her neck.

Later, when the fire has died down to embers, they stretch out alongside one another on the pallet with the blankets draped over them. Her back is pressed to his chest and his arm drapes over her, hand resting against her stomach. “Are we going to talk about it?” he asks, voice a low rumble in his chest.

“Hm?”

His hand strokes the soft skin beneath it. “What went wrong with your bankai?”

Rukia huffs under her breath and doesn’t look at him. “It was necessary,” is all she says.

“I know it was _necessary_. But you couldn’t get out of it on your own. What does Shirayuki say?” Rukia’s chuckle is low in her throat as his arm tightens around her waist, keeping her pressed close. They’re still nude beneath the blankets, and he is warm and firm against her.

“Shirayuki’s been busy,” she reminds him, and Ichigo huffs out his own laugh, but they’re both a little flushed with the reminder that her zanpakutō and his have a tendency to twine together as tightly as they do.

“Fine, fine. But – you’ll talk with her about it, yeah? Zangetsu and me, we’ll help.”

“Hn.” She settles closer to him and murmurs, “I know.” Then they drift a while, listening to the last crackling embers in the fire pit.

“We’ll go back to the Seireitei tomorrow,” Rukia says as the light outside the mouth of the cave grows dark with the coming night.

Something pops in the fire. “You think that’s the last of them?” he asks. They haven’t exactly debriefed their fight with the sternritter, having been too busy first healing one another and then, well. Other things.

“In this part of Soul Society, I think so.” Rukia turns in his arms and he follows automatically, shifting to his back so that she can lay her head against his shoulder.

“Tomorrow, then,” Ichigo agrees. “It’ll be good to be back home.”

“Sick of sleeping in a cave?” Rukia teases.

“Che. You are too,” he grumbles, and his lips ghost against the top of her head.

In the morning, there will be sore backs from sleeping on a stone floor, another sweep of the area, and then the trip back to the Seireitei. But for now, there is the slight weight of her in his arms, and her hand resting over his heart. Ichigo drifts to sleep with her, content.


End file.
